A exposure of current history, soon forgotten.
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Thursday

Catch 22

Due to the anti-Semitic trend that has been going on in Europe from the start of this new millennium, Jews have once again felt – and rightfully so – that it’s not even safe to wear a Star of David necklace, and that the government in charge has failed to address the overall security issues for the Jewish minority properly. If harassed Jews then should take the rather large step and move to Israel, using the Israeli inherent right of law of return, they will find themselves belonging to different group, portrayed by some politicians and in various Swedish media as “settlers”, and usually with the prefix “illegal”, or some other derogative labeling. But if, on the other hand, aliens, foreign asylum seekers, immigrants or work labor, (or like the Swedish prime minister Göran Persson once described this new phenomenon – “social tourism”) come to Sweden, it’s with pride the establishment calls it “multicultural exchange”.

For that very reason Sweden even had a minister of integration, Mona Sahlin, who served for years until 2004. Once she was expected to become the first female prime minister, but that was before the scandal when she used her government issued credit card for private purchases. She then went on “vacation” and made herself unavailable as the media wanted to ask her about it. It turned out that the would-be PM had difficulties handling her personal finances and that she mixed them up with her work and her spending account. Later she had problems again with handling her personal finances like paying parking tickets on time, despite the fact that she earned at least five times as much as, for instance, an overworked nurse who would have been fired for the same thing.

On the issue of anti-Semitism she has, among other things, come to the following conclusion (after reading the Sverker Oredsson and Mikael Tossavainen report), in statement No 10; “Likewise it is also told in the report that anti-Semitism is not specific for Arabs and Muslims.” Then she goes on with the usual promises of “investigations”, “hiring experts”, and bragging about Sweden “keeping statistics”. While statistics might be good for measuring the current climate, actual counter-actions to combat anti-Semitism would have been better. Annelie Enochson from the Christian Democrats concluded in statement No 18 that Jewish institutions in Sweden have to pay out of their own pockets for their own security, and they spend about 20% of their budgets solely on matters regarding security. Sahlin, while speaking on the topic of Swedish anti-Semitism, also explains in statement No 16:

“It is very important that one has the energy to understand the difference between criticizing a state, its government politics, whatever they may be, and to hate and despise an entire group like the Jews. All people calling themselves democrats must be able to do this. It is very important.”

Perhaps she should have educated her own party members, and especially the members of Parliament, on such issues, especially since they previously managed to describe the Jewish nation Israel’s democratically elected leader Sharon, as an “infamous ex-terrorist … war criminal” and other various derogatory, demonizing and insulting adjectives. Again, what did the Human Rights First report from March 22, 2004 have to say about such generalizations?

“In assessing the debate on the ‘new anti-Semitism’ we state that while criticism of Israel or the Zionist movement should not be considered inherently anti-Semitic, when this ‘disparages or demonizes Jews as individuals or collectively’ it crosses the line to become anti-Semitism.”

At the Swedish Parliament’s online database the single word “Sharon” alone results in more than 200 hits by the end of 2004 with a plethora of possible descriptions of character for the world’s only sovereign Jewish nation and their representative as well as democratically elected leader.In 2004 the newly elected leader of the Left party, Lars Ohly (previously outspoken communist Gudrun Schyman had to resign due to a tax income scandal) had stated in Parliament, that Sharon is “…coming through as a monster, a monster with very powerful friends…”.

Mona Sahlin spoke many times about xenophobia with regards to Muslims, and organized several campaigns on behalf of the Muslims, as well as making statements such as “We need more mosques in Sweden”, but said very little about Muslims, originating from the Middle East, harassing Swedish Jews, and even less was said about any suggestions of funding Jewish organizations in order to help out with security measures, as in direct needs for security in order to preserve their presence within Swedish society. This while her governing colleagues’ affiliations have funded and channeled aid, along with moral support, yearly in the millions and adding up to billions, to a corrupt dictatorship regime that slaughter Jews. Well, it just might seem a bit hypocritical to then brag about the prime minister’s previous personal initiative regarding the Living History project.

At the Swedish Parliament debate regarding those very fundings, her Social Democratic colleague, Berndt Ekholm, stated in his assessment of Israel’s “peace counterpart” Yassir Arafat, who gave the world mayhem and terror and mainly targeting civilian Jews during the past 40 years, that: ”He is a freedom fighter, simple as that, but cannot transform this to such diplomacy which is needed for success”…